Folha de S. Paulo, O Estado de S. Paulo, and O Globo announced plans to start charging for their iPad apps, Macworld Brasil reports.
O Estado do Paraná newspaper, whose print edition circulated in Curitiba for 59 years, will abandon print and go entirely online, Folha de S. Paulo and Meio & Mensagem report.
President Rafael Correa has proposed holding a popular vote on limiting bank investment in media companies in order to “avoid conflicts of interest,” AFP and EFE report. The referendum, which also includes judicial reforms, is now being analyzed by the Constitutional Court to confirm its legality.
Former TV executive José Enrique Crousillat, who was convicted of selling his station’s editorial line during the regime of President Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), was returned to prison after being released for health reasons and later turning fugitive.
The new communications minister, Paulo Bernardo, said he supported a rule that bars a company from owning a radio station, newspaper, and TV station in the same region, Folha de S. Paulo reports. He made the statements in an interview with TV Brasil (see the video below).
For Argentine publisher and journalist Jorge Fontevecchia, many activists who support President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – those aligned with so-called kirchnerismo – are prone to distorting the truth due to a mix of ideology and resentment. “[T]hey always aspired for notoriety, transcendence, influence, or the visibility that the big media has, [and] never got it and… kirchnerismo heals their frustration,” Fontevecchia controversially writes in his column for Perfil. Fontevecchia is the founder and editor of the newspaper.
The Argentine government spent $27 million on broadcast TV advertising in 2010, and 67.5% of the funds went to Canal 9, the most watched channel in the country, La Nación reports. According to Clarín, opposition lawmakers have called for an immediate investigation into government spending on ads.
Recently inaugurated President Dilma Rouseff’s new communications minister, Paulo Bernardo, defended the need for a new regulatory framework for the sector, during his speech at the Jan. 3 handover ceremony, Terra reports.
Brazil’s National Newspaper Association (ANJ) and Google have established new rules for how Google displays and indexes Brazilian news content, O Globo reports. Now, users of Google News will only see one line of each listed story instead of three lines.
The deaths of 81 inmates in a prison fire in Santiago this month have brought angry response by users of social networks, who criticized prison conditions in Chile and accused the media of insensitive coverage, Global Voices Online reports.
Alleged statements by a drug trafficking suspect who was captured in September and is now under witness protection in Mexico has led to a heated back and forth between Proceso magazine and Televisa.
Federal prosecutors in São Paulo have begun to investigate whether the Portuguese media group Ongoing has violated a constitutional provision that bans foreigners from owning more than 30 percent of a media outlet, Folha de S. Paulo reports. The investigation was motivated by a complaint from the National Newspaper Association (ANJ) and the Brazilian Association of Radio and TV Broadcasters (Abert).